Christianity Is Dangerous

[Just Some Dude]

And FirstFloor, you really need to find some Christians who are going to be honest with you.
I'm not sure TWEB is the place to find that.

I'm sorry, this statement makes me laugh.

And just because it's the internet, I'll explain that my laughter is sarcastic and derisive to your position, which is clearly (to anyone who knows anything about Christians on TWeb and their history) fallacious and pathetic. TWeb is a place where I know Christians are going to be honest. I may not like their position, but I know that they will be honest about what their position is.

The fallacy of composition hard at work...

I'd like to respond, but I'm not catching your argument here.

[Meh Gerbil]

I'm sorry, this statement makes me laugh.

And just because it's the internet, I'll explain that my laughter is sarcastic and derisive to your position, which is clearly (to anyone who knows anything about Christians on TWeb and their history) fallacious and pathetic. TWeb is a place where I know Christians are going to be honest. I may not like their position, but I know that they will be honest about what their position is.

Okay, I'll assume they are being honest and immediately adopt the following positions:

1: Churches don't use stories of damnation in the afterlife to scare children into making professions of faith.
2: It is rational to allow the phrase "I didn't do it" to excuse 1500 years of rape, torture, and murder. Skeptics see that as rational.
3: When skeptics talk about abuse in the Church, they are dingbats who should be mocked for being stupid.
4: Despite a Christian in this thread advocating mass murder the skeptic has absolutely nothing to fear.

Wow, that does make my life easier.
Thanks buddy.

[Just Some Dude]

From everything I've read from this thread, I think you are just whining that people here don't agree with your position. I'd appreciate it if you were more honest about that, instead of disguising it as the people here being dishonest.

[Darth Executor]

4: Despite a Christian in this thread advocating mass murder the skeptic has absolutely nothing to fear.

Why would skeptics fear mass murder? Despite not having had much overt power before the last century or so, atheists have butchered so many innocent people since then that they probably hold the per capita record on corpse manufacture. Or maybe that's why they're so afraid...

[Christianbookworm]

Who's on which side? Whether Christianity is dangerous or not has nothing to do with its truth value. The Truth can be dangerous! Well, wisdom incarnat would be dangerous period, not a tame lion(C.S. Lewis) indeed!(but that's off topic) Who's more dangerous, humans or God?

[Darth Executor]

Who's on which side? Whether Christianity is dangerous or not has nothing to do with its truth value. The Truth can be dangerous! Well, wisdom incarnat would be dangerous period, not a tame lion(C.S. Lewis) indeed!

There is no side here. It's every man for himself, just like Jesus wanted.

[Christianbookworm]

Theist vs non-theist! Those sides! Or more specifically, Christian vs Non Christian

[lilpixieofterror]

Okay, I'll assume they are being honest and immediately adopt the following positions:

1: Churches don't use stories of damnation in the afterlife to scare children into making professions of faith.

Well Gerbz I personally don't do that nor do I encourage such behavior, but the solution to fixing bad religion is not to throw it all out the window. It is to make it better.

2: It is rational to allow the phrase "I didn't do it" to excuse 1500 years of rape, torture, and murder. Skeptics see that as rational.

There is not a single idea or moment on the planet that can't be somewhat directly linked to some kind of horrible act. Take democracy. How could the land of the free wage a war against the American Natives and continue to break promises made to them? How could we allow people to keep others in slavery for nearly a century? How could America lock up thousands of Japanese descendents during WWII for no other crime beyond the fact they had ancestors from Japan? How could the people be responsible for who they elect when the truth is that both Hitler, Mussolini, and Saddam were all elected in their respective countries? Should we throw the democratic republic system out the window too or should we come to realize that evil people will use whatever tools they have to them to commit whatever crime they wish to justify? Rather those justifications rest upon religious or secular grounds.

3: When skeptics talk about abuse in the Church, they are dingbats who should be mocked for being stupid.

When skeptics use abuse as grounds to reject Christianity and for personal gain they should be mocked for it just as people who try to use abuses of government to reject government and for personal gain should be mocked too. If they use it to improve things,t hat is another story.

4: Despite a Christian in this thread advocating mass murder the skeptic has absolutely nothing to fear.

Darthy couldn't get an army or become in charge if he wanted to. He'd be lucky to rally his teddy bear collection to follow his every whim.

[lilpixieofterror]

I think most humanists are for secular government and church state separation including the removal of publicly funded sponsorship of religion by tax exemptions. Humanists object strongly to the conversion of children by threatening them with everlasting torture. It is inhumane. Christians rationalize this inhumanity and call it love. That is why Christians are dangerous.

So FF, are you also for taxing all no profit groups too?

[One Bad Pig]

Well, I thought I'd go back and take a closer look at this, though I was hoping to see a response to my last post (since I was seeking clarification).

One thing that is beginning to annoy me a little bit is the tendency of Christian apologists to wave off 1,500 years of abuse in the name of Jesus Christ as if it were a trifle, a unfortunate misunderstanding, or a theological tiff.

Do you have any actual examples of this? I can see a poor apologist waving abuse away by claiming the abusers weren't real Christians, but your assertion strikes me as unrealistic even for a minority of apologists, let alone a tendency.

Church history is rife with the systemic rape, torture, enslavement, and murder of opponents of the one truth faith. Often, these cleansings were carried out against people whose faith system was quite nearly indistinguishable from those of the oppressor. It is a sordid, sick history of the presence of hell on earth.

What you're doing here is exactly what you decried in your first sentence; you're simply erring in the opposite direction.

I've seen the apologists attack this issue by pointing to the eradication of slavery in the USA. This argument is one of many that just doesn't gain any traction, after all, it is just another case of Christian on Christian violence. Should the skeptic really be impressed that it took a Civil War for a Christian nation to eradicate slavery? Let's be serious.

I agree it's not a great argument. Would the eradication of slavery in England be a better one?

Another ridiculous argument usually involves laying out before the skeptic some long winded explanation about how the various sects of Christianity are different from one another. The problem is that every single branch of Christianity has violence in its past, with perhaps the exception of the Anabaptists, who were largely exterminated by other sects - we've a history of people claiming the name of Jesus Christ to kill pacifists! This approach is a train wreck.

You're over-generalizing and/or using hyperbole here. I agree it's not a great argument. Is it one you come across often?

The abuse continues to our current day. From the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which was systemically covered up for decades, to the bat-poop nuttiness of Protestant Fundamentalists, who engage in the most glaring forms of psychological abuse every Sunday at 10:00am - to the really weird and sick stuff that rolls around under cover of darkness - the history is ongoing and it is a sad, sick, perverted heap of sin. Don't try to sell me the idea this stuff isn't ongoing, I was in a Fundy church that involved thousands of people. I saw the abuse up front and in person.

There you go again, taking the worst examples you can come up with and using them to tar Christianity in general.

So here is the burr for me.

When a atheist comes to TWEB and starts taking about 'Theocracy' and fears about the 'Christian Right' and how Christians are bigots who are anxious to use power to destroy other human beings that atheist isn't some off the wall dingbat who is making stuff up.

No, he just has an unreasonable fear that a tiny majority of off the wall dingbats are somehow going to seize control of a republic. He needs to learn a little perspective.

The dude just got up this morning and read the paper.

Er, not on a typical morning, even though off-the-wall dingbats tend to make good news copy.

Our marketing problems aren't his problems.

Marketing? I wasn't aware we were called to market.

Frankly, I hope Christians NEVER get power in any government on this planet again - and if you need examples as to why I feel that way I'd be happy to take you to a couple of churches I know. The sermons they deliver there will make you physically sick.

And, yet again, you take the worst example you can find and splatter the rest of the vast majority with its filth.

The skeptics/atheists/militant-feminist-lesbian-meth-smokers are afraid of Christians for perfectly justifiable reasons.
We need to recognize that the fear is grounded in REALITY and that many of these people have experienced abuse first hand.

Er, no. In the case of abuse, the fear is grounded in their highly warped view of reality. It's not their fault that their view is warped, but it's not mine either. I can endeavor to change their view, but only if they're willing to listen. Christians who perpetrate violence in the name of religion are seldom remembered fondly; rather, it is those who willingly suffered violence without returning it in kind who are held up as shining examples of the faith.

It is absurd that we expect abused people who are fully aware of church history to come in here and be perfectly polite.

I don't expect abused people to be polite about what abused them. Abuse is horrific and leaves psychological scars that are invariably difficult to heal. I don't recall seeing any evidence that a sizable percentage of skeptics suffered abuse at the hands of Christians. Perhaps you'd like to share some?

As I've mentioned in this thread, any large group of humanity is likely to have practitioners of abuse and violence in its ranks - including skeptics. Every single time skeptics have attained power it's been associated with a bloodbath, from the French Revolution to the Khmer Rouge. If anything, skeptics should be even more afraid of themselves coming to power.

As it happens, I don't want Christians to come to power in a theocracy either, because power corrupts.

I have a parting question for you. Now that you've denounced in no uncertain terms bad apologetics, what do you think would be a good (or at least less bad) way to approach to subject? Any poseur with a pen keyboard can tear something down. It takes rather more to raise an edifice instead.

[Truthseeker]

How could the people be responsible for who they elect when the truth is that both Hitler, Mussolini, and Saddam were all elected in their respective countries? Should we throw the democratic republic system out the window too or should we come to realize that evil people will use whatever tools they have to them to commit whatever crime they wish to justify? Rather those justifications rest upon religious or secular grounds.

Hitler never got a majority of votes in seven elections. He and his people used skulduggery to grab power in Germany. And how about rigged elections? Those would not surprise me. I don't know how good this Wikipedia entry is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_H..._rise_to_power but it may give us some idea of what really happened. Should not use an example that is not really applicable or seems doubtful.


I tend to favor the posts by Billy the Cat. For one thing, Christians can sometimes point out a logical fallacy in the atheist's attack. I perhaps should brush up my logic & argument skills. "Hasty generalization based on one's anecdotal experience or communication"--I want to remember that.

[Truthseeker]

Well, I thought I'd go back and take a closer look at this, though I was hoping to see a response to my last post (since I was seeking clarification).


Do you have any actual examples of this? I can see a poor apologist waving abuse away by claiming the abusers weren't real Christians, but your assertion strikes me as unrealistic even for a minority of apologists, let alone a tendency. ......

No amen button? Please allow me to use this means to send kudos to OBP.

[lilpixieofterror]

Hitler never got a majority of votes in seven elections. He and his people used skulduggery to grab power in Germany. And how about rigged elections? Those would not surprise me. I don't know how good this Wikipedia entry is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_H..._rise_to_power but it may give us some idea of what really happened. Should not use an example that is not really applicable or seems doubtful.


I tend to favor the posts by Billy the Cat. For one thing, Christians can sometimes point out a logical fallacy in the atheist's attack. I perhaps should brush up my logic & argument skills. "Hasty generalization based on one's anecdotal experience or communication"--I want to remember that.

Sorry, not in a mood for conspiracy theories today. Maybe tomorrow though.

[37818]

If in the Skeptic's mind the presence of a Christian President, House of Representatives, Judiciary and 90% Christian population (at the time of the Civil War) doesn't make a Christian Nation then I'm sure I don't know what would compose such a nation. I suppose we could have slaughtered the rest of the Indians and made it 100% Christian.

There are today over 30,000 Christian sects. If you had to point out the genuine Christian [wheat] from the mere professing Christians [tares], the mature wheat and the mature tares, how would you distinguish between them? Or more simply if you were to explain how one becomes a genuine Christian, what could you explain? I think if you knew the answer, you would not have even started this thread.

[firstfloor]

So FF, are you also for taxing all no profit groups too?